


Grief

by Flightless_Bird



Series: Stitches [6]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Blood, Body Horror, Character Death reference, Depression, Desert Bluffs, Grief, Language, Night Terrors, Nightmares, PTSD hints, Past Torture, Post-Strex Kevin, Strexcorp, mild though, mutilation references, strexmeds, wow I’m hurting him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 02:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14149656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flightless_Bird/pseuds/Flightless_Bird
Summary: He was having nightmares again.





	Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, okay, the hurt is back. Apparently, I can’t stop doing this to Kevin. But hang in there with me! 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and let me know what you liked or would like to see next! :D

His nightmares were back.

  
He heard screams, he heard laughter, he heard the rev of engines and roars of Pets, he saw blinding, blinding light, and blood, her blood, so much blood, and then she was screaming again, and it was unlike anything—

  
“ _Vanessa_!” He jerked awake, gasping, bolting upright. The room was a haze of dim evening light, falling softly over the floor and coffee table next to him. He’d fallen asleep on the couch. Sweat stuck his shirt uncomfortably to his skin and it seemed like every scarred place on his body burned. He swallowed and tasted copper. Gripping the edge of the couch for support, he carefully edged his tongue to the corners of his mouth. Dammit. He’d screamed in his sleep and torn through his stitches again.

  
The knowledge that this was still happening, that he wasn’t any better, the image of her eyes searing in his skull, was too much.

  
He pushed off of the couch like a gunshot and strode to a side hallway of the apartment. A door off to the left led to the small bathroom where he’d stored his things, and he tore the cabinet door open. His eyes roved over the bottles and toothpaste, fingers trembling as he skimmed them over their labels. “Shit,” he hissed, not finding what he needed. Of course he wouldn’t find them, what made him think they’d let him keep that?

  
What made him so weak that he wanted it?

  
“Shit!” Anger—glorious, singing anger—boiled in him and he slammed the door shut. His head was buzzing, swarming with the things of his nightmare and it hurt. His neck ached and he flinched, expecting the pain of a shock collar. He didn’t know if he was relieved or anguished when it never came. At least it would have brought him back to his senses.

  
Tremors racked his body so hard, his human body glitched, skin flickering as emotion tried to pull him to his eldritch side. But his Sight was gone, and he couldn’t, and _it hurt so damn bad_.

  
He retched once, over the sink, grasping the cool porcelain for some sort of anchor. He needed them, the Strexmeds.   
Out in the living room, a robin chirped softly.

  
_He’d lied, and they’d all believed him, especially her, and she was the first he would let down and watch being slaughtered by them._

  
A sob wrenched itself from the pit of his chest.   
He’d had barely a day to truly grieve before they’d twisted him into their Voice.

  
Soft and slow, he backed away from the sink and sank to the floor. He brought his knees up to his chest and draped his arms around them. The tears kept coming, burning his cheeks, catching in the mutilated scars of his mouth and mingling with the newly-drawn blood.

  
And now, he grieved.

 


End file.
